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A Self-Organising Model of Thermoregulatory Huddling
Endotherms such as rats and mice huddle together to keep warm. The huddle is considered to be an example of a self-organising system, because complex properties of the collective group behaviour are thought to emerge spontaneously through simple interactions between individuals. Groups of rodent pup...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2015
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4559402/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26334993 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004283 |
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author | Glancy, Jonathan Groß, Roderich Stone, James V. Wilson, Stuart P. |
author_facet | Glancy, Jonathan Groß, Roderich Stone, James V. Wilson, Stuart P. |
author_sort | Glancy, Jonathan |
collection | PubMed |
description | Endotherms such as rats and mice huddle together to keep warm. The huddle is considered to be an example of a self-organising system, because complex properties of the collective group behaviour are thought to emerge spontaneously through simple interactions between individuals. Groups of rodent pups display two such emergent properties. First, huddling undergoes a ‘phase transition’, such that pups start to aggregate rapidly as the temperature of the environment falls below a critical temperature. Second, the huddle maintains a constant ‘pup flow’, where cooler pups at the periphery continually displace warmer pups at the centre. We set out to test whether these complex group behaviours can emerge spontaneously from local interactions between individuals. We designed a model using a minimal set of assumptions about how individual pups interact, by simply turning towards heat sources, and show in computer simulations that the model reproduces the first emergent property—the phase transition. However, this minimal model tends to produce an unnatural behaviour where several smaller aggregates emerge rather than one large huddle. We found that an extension of the minimal model to include heat exchange between pups allows the group to maintain one large huddle but eradicates the phase transition, whereas inclusion of an additional homeostatic term recovers the phase transition for large huddles. As an unanticipated consequence, the extended model also naturally gave rise to the second observed emergent property—a continuous pup flow. The model therefore serves as a minimal description of huddling as a self-organising system, and as an existence proof that group-level huddling dynamics emerge spontaneously through simple interactions between individuals. We derive a specific testable prediction: Increasing the capacity of the individual to generate or conserve heat will increase the range of ambient temperatures over which adaptive thermoregulatory huddling will emerge. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-4559402 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2015 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-45594022015-09-10 A Self-Organising Model of Thermoregulatory Huddling Glancy, Jonathan Groß, Roderich Stone, James V. Wilson, Stuart P. PLoS Comput Biol Research Article Endotherms such as rats and mice huddle together to keep warm. The huddle is considered to be an example of a self-organising system, because complex properties of the collective group behaviour are thought to emerge spontaneously through simple interactions between individuals. Groups of rodent pups display two such emergent properties. First, huddling undergoes a ‘phase transition’, such that pups start to aggregate rapidly as the temperature of the environment falls below a critical temperature. Second, the huddle maintains a constant ‘pup flow’, where cooler pups at the periphery continually displace warmer pups at the centre. We set out to test whether these complex group behaviours can emerge spontaneously from local interactions between individuals. We designed a model using a minimal set of assumptions about how individual pups interact, by simply turning towards heat sources, and show in computer simulations that the model reproduces the first emergent property—the phase transition. However, this minimal model tends to produce an unnatural behaviour where several smaller aggregates emerge rather than one large huddle. We found that an extension of the minimal model to include heat exchange between pups allows the group to maintain one large huddle but eradicates the phase transition, whereas inclusion of an additional homeostatic term recovers the phase transition for large huddles. As an unanticipated consequence, the extended model also naturally gave rise to the second observed emergent property—a continuous pup flow. The model therefore serves as a minimal description of huddling as a self-organising system, and as an existence proof that group-level huddling dynamics emerge spontaneously through simple interactions between individuals. We derive a specific testable prediction: Increasing the capacity of the individual to generate or conserve heat will increase the range of ambient temperatures over which adaptive thermoregulatory huddling will emerge. Public Library of Science 2015-09-03 /pmc/articles/PMC4559402/ /pubmed/26334993 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004283 Text en © 2015 Glancy et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Glancy, Jonathan Groß, Roderich Stone, James V. Wilson, Stuart P. A Self-Organising Model of Thermoregulatory Huddling |
title | A Self-Organising Model of Thermoregulatory Huddling |
title_full | A Self-Organising Model of Thermoregulatory Huddling |
title_fullStr | A Self-Organising Model of Thermoregulatory Huddling |
title_full_unstemmed | A Self-Organising Model of Thermoregulatory Huddling |
title_short | A Self-Organising Model of Thermoregulatory Huddling |
title_sort | self-organising model of thermoregulatory huddling |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4559402/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26334993 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004283 |
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